Con artists of the world

Hollywood star Will Smith visited the Taj Mahal. File Photo

Will Smith was photographed at Bombay airport a week or so ago, surfacing in public for the first time since he assaulted the host of the Academy Awards. He is in India to seek spiritual solace, apparently, which made me laugh out louder than when I read his poor apology online a day after the awards. It also made me consider a few questions that have bothered me for a long time now.

Why do so many foreigners visit our country in the hope of spiritual enlightenment? Do they not check the news before booking tickets? It's not as if they all live in countries where the press has been muzzled, so what stops them from picking up a newspaper now and again?

No one in his or her right mind would refer to India as an enlightened country. There is no spirituality here, or respect, or love. We have no compassion for human life, let alone esteem for the Earth or our environment. And yet, like ants drawn to a fallen lollipop, tourists keep coming in, hoping to leave our shores with peace and a sense of purpose that we have never had any proof of having for ourselves. Do we come across as lovers of peace, or as people who know what we're doing?

I blame The Beatles for this. If those four young men hadn't to be conned by the first in a long and unbroken line of conmen, maybe the West would have turned to other, more genuinely enlightened parts of Asia. If it weren't for those Liverpudlians spending time at some dubious ashram in the middle of nowhere, we would probably have fewer long-haired, white robe-wearing con artists charging people for breathing exercises while encroaching upon more of our public land.

Maybe some of us should do the decent thing and talk to foreigners we know personally. Maybe we should hold them by the hands and point them towards the many ways in which India disregards morality, decency, and human rights. We can tell them why India dropped one spot to 131 among 189 countries in the 2020 human development index, for instance, and why it stayed at that dismal spot the following year. How can a country that performs better than just 58 others on the planet when it comes to treating its citizens be looked at as a place of enlightenment?

Another question that often bothers me is the kind of happiness foreigners expect when they visit our bigoted shores. In 2022, the United Nations' World Happiness Report that ranked around 150 countries placed India at 136. There are a little over ten countries less happy than our own, so what exactly do outsiders hope to find when they stop by? The report asked questions on the respondents' experiences of lives being in balance, feeling at peace with life, experiencing calm for a lot of the day, and focusing on caring for others or self. It found that those experiences were more prevalent in Western countries, which made me presume that what tourists really look for here is the secret to misery.

If we were as content as people abroad think we are, maybe millions of us wouldn't try to desperately get out as soon as possible. Maybe the sons and daughters of our politicians wouldn't rush to the first foreign university they could, if their parents genuinely believed India was better. If religion claims to bring human beings closer to God, a country as obsessed with faith should have topped those rankings on happiness a long time ago.

The Beatles won't drop by again, thankfully, but the damage they unleashed will take a while to fix. It may be a few more years before the rest of the world wakes up to the daily atrocities committed upon millions of us by our fellow countrymen. Until that happens, and more journalists in India start to locate their spines, we may have to get used to disappointed tourists at the airport looking for other sources of nirvana.

I have no idea what Will Smith will find at the end of his journey here. Maybe he will go back with a serenity he didn't have before he turned up. Maybe he will quit the corrupt world of Hollywood and choose the more lucrative path of becoming a cult leader. I don't really care. I just hope he doesn't talk about it though, because the world needs to hear the truth about India for a change.

When he isn't ranting about all things Mumbai, Lindsay Pereira can be almost sweet. He tweets @lindsaypereira

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The views expressed in this column are the individual's and don't represent those of the paper